Q. Two years ago I dispatched a spoof Christmas letter
to a select handful of friends thinking this might amuse them. I committed all the standard crimes: blowby-blow accounts of (fictitious) holidays and activities; an insistence on the good looks, academic prowess and remarkable musicality of our children; my own successes; our soaring incomes; hilarity at the expense of the au pair; new kitchen and so on. I referred to the continuing asylum status of my daughter’s Afghan husband, sketching in how they had met when she was researching the impact of the previous year’s poppy crop on the local farmers for her forthcoming book, All Spaced Out and Nowhere to Go, and neatly deflecting any unwanted whiff of an imperfect situation by mentioning the massive advance from Hodders. Here is my dilemma: although most of our friends got the joke, periodically one or two will make tentative inquiries as to the continuing non-appearance of my daughter’s book or Afghan husband. Please can you help me get out of this hole without (a) making them seem idiotic, or (b) offending those whose newsletters add to the general seasonal gaiety.
C.L.F., Aldeburgh A. When these questions arise, assume an aghast expression and cry, ‘But didn’t you get the handwritten flier? You must have had a handwritten flier as well as the round robin saying, “I have had such a drab year and nothing of interest to report that I have invented a fictional year. This is what I wish had happened.”’
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